Even Financial to Acquire Birch Finance

NEW YORK, Oct. 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Even Financial (“Even”), the leading search, comparison and recommendation engine for financial services, announced today that it is acquiring Birch Finance (“Birch”), an award-winning personal finance app that helps everyday consumers find the best credit cards and optimize their rewards.

Birch is a San Jose-based technology startup that offers a mobile and web application that makes finding the right credit cards painless. Its core recommendation engine analyzes a user’s real transaction history and compares it against hundreds of credit cards and their respective reward programs to determine the optimal set of cards that individuals should have in their wallet. Birch compares over 200 of the top credit cards to provide unbiased recommendations. The company has received several awards, including “Best in Show” at FinCon’s FinTech Startup Competition last year, and was featured at TechCrunch Disrupt.

“The credit card market continues to expand with millions of consumers opening up hundreds of different types of credit cards every year for countless reasons,” said Phillip Rosen, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Even Financial. “Birch already has one of the largest credit card databases and their technology perfectly complements our existing platform as we expand our offering to the credit card space. This acquisition will allow our partners to optimize the process of getting the right cards to the right consumers.”

Even provides essential infrastructure for financial services and channel partners to connect consumers with personalized products, utilizing its robust yet simple API. Even is proven to lower cost of acquisition, improve monetization, monitor compliance and deliver transparency at scale. Through its platform, Even enables a wide range of over 150 partners – companies like Credit.com, The Penny Hoarder, Transunion and Empower – to connect and monetize their audience with optimal product recommendations and real-time decisions from financial institutions, such as Prosper, Lending Club and Marcus by Goldman Sachs.

Even’s platform works by evaluating consumers on a rich set of criteria to determine the ideal financial product fit. Consumer data is sourced, verified and enhanced by machine learning to create a robust profile that allows financial institutions to easily match consumers in real-time to the optimal product for their needs. This reduces their acquisition cost and simultaneously increases their supply of qualified consumers with greater monetization.

“We saw a clear synergy with Even’s business strategy and growth plans, and I’m thrilled to join Even’s team as we expand and scale our offerings into new areas,” said Alex Cohen, Chief Executive Officer of Birch Finance.

Effective immediately, Mr. Cohen will assume the role of Senior Director, Credit Card Marketplace, Even Financial.

This is another milestone in the fast growth of Even. In August, the company announced an $18.8 million Series A funding round Led by GreatPoint Ventures. American Express Ventures, Goldman Sachs, NerdWallet co-founder Jacob Gibson and Jason Owen, Senior Vice President and General Manager at Credit.com are some of the notable investors working with Even.